


Her Tea Runs In My Veins

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For life is short as shortbread, and cold water so stale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Tea Runs In My Veins

The dreams are sudden and they come with no warning. Late one afternoon she falls asleep in the offices of the Hong Kong registrar, waiting for the paperwork to get passed.  In the dream, she gets up and walks out of the office; but instead of coming into the corridor, she trips on wet moss and steps into a brook.  The water is icy cold and there is nasty green sludge floating through it, so she hastily climbs out – now she’s standing on a bank and the office is nowhere in sight – and takes off her shoes.  Barefoot, she walks through the strange and familiar landscape.

The tea party is where she remembered it, and nobody notices immediately when she pulls out a chair and takes her place at the table.  The Hatter is holding forth at length upon the subject of cranberries and ignoring the March Hare’s protests and occasional teacup missile, so Alice simply pours herself a cup of tea. After some thought, she takes a scone.

“Not the scones,” says the Hatter, rapping her wrist sharply, “not just today, Alice – ” and then his eyes grow wide and he stops.  “Why, so it is Alice!”

“I did say I’d be back in no time,” says Alice, moving the scone to her plate.

“Yes, yes,” says the Hatter, “but there isn’t any time here, it’s always no time, how’s one to tell the difference?  Why, if you asked us – ” and here he pauses, and grows morose ” – certainly it’s been ever – and ever – and ever – “

The Hare sends a fork and a saucer winging their way.  Alice ducks the saucer; the fork lodges itself in the Hatter’s hat brim.  The Hatter brightens up at this.  “Most glorious.  You’ve no idea, Alice,” he adds, “how long we’ve had to wait.  The tea’s almost cold.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“As well you should,” says the Dormouse, a tad nastily. “Why, it takes all day to brew a new jorum!”

The Hare caps her with a teapot lid.  The Dormouse shrieks.  “Don’t mind her,” says the Hatter, nervously patting Alice’s hand, “it’s no trouble at all.  Certainly I – we – haven’t anything better to do, not with you off in places.”  His eyes flicker, then light up.  “But now you’re here! Shall we begin proper?”

It is the most ridiculous tea party Alice has attended yet, but this time she doesn’t complain.  When she wakes up in the office, it’s nearly full dark outside, but her shoes still haven’t dried out.

 

* * *

 

Alice does not always go to the tea party.  Sometimes she is in the pale, moon-coloured palace, playing chess with the White Queen.  Sometimes she rows a boat down the brook while trying to gather rushes.  She knows she should be looking for something, someone, but there are always more pressing issues at hand and she has to deal with them first.  It’s only after she wakes up that she remembers she should have excused herself and gone to the tea party.  But somehow it never comes to mind while she’s in the dream.  Dreams tend to go like that.

Not all the dreams are good.  Once Alice finds herself picking her way through dry, orange wasteland.  She chances upon a curious formation of red caves that open up into great underground halls, but regrets her keenness for exploration when she discovers the Red Queen and the Knave ensconced in the final cavern.

The Red Queen’s response to Alice’s arrival is textbook.  “YOU!” she shrieks, pointing the sceptre now chipped with use.  “I’ll not have you here, you great beast!  Off with her head!”

“So this is where you’ve ended up,” says Alice, ignoring her.  She wanders further into the cavern, the Red Queen swatting ineffectively at her skirts and bellowing.  A shadow on a nearby pillar reveals itself to be the Knave, chained to the pillar by both wrists.

“My God,” says Alice, “have you kept him like this all this while?”

The Red Queen sulks.  “I had no choice.  He kept trying to kill me.”

“Do you blame me?” calls the Knave.  As Alice steps closer, she can see that his eyepatch is hanging loose; from some angles she can see into the hollow of his eye socket.  There are tears in his clothes, like someone has been inflicting a thousand tiny cuts on his torso day after day.  The Knave winks at her with his remaining eye, gives her a crooked smile.  “Sweet, sweet Alice.  You’ve come to set me free.  That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, to set me free?”

“I’m not to speak to you, or show you kindness,” recalls Alice.  Her mouth is dry with horror.

“You know what she’s like,” whispers the Knave.  “She’ll never let me go.”

“You don’t care!” howls the Red Queen.  “You don’t care for me, not one bit! And after everything we’ve been through!” She takes a swipe at the Knave, the sceptre catching him in the ribs and making him wince.  Alice makes a grab for the sceptre and hurls it away from them.  The Red Queen bursts into tears and pummels Alice in the knees.  “I love him, don’t you see! This is how you treat the ones you love, everyone ought to know that.”

“That’s not true,” snaps Alice, trying to fend her off.

“Of course not,” says the Knave cruelly.  “You like to make yours wait instead.”

Alice is on her feet and raring to strike him before she catches herself.  He already has all he deserves, she tells herself, and lowers her hand.  “I’m glad you two have each other,” she says wearily, and heads out of the caves.

She can hear the Knave shouting her name, but it’s drowned out by the Queen’s screaming.  Alice lengthens her stride – she doesn’t know where she is, but perhaps she can make it to the tea party before her time is up.  But the sun is hot on the orange sand, and her head begins to swim.  Her vision twists and she falls to the ground, sinks into the sand and tumbles through the ceiling and into her bed at the Embassy.

You don’t get to control your dreams.  Sometimes, Alice thinks bitterly as she wipes cold sweat from her brow, sometimes even reality is easier to manage.

 

* * *

 

Alice gets married when she is twenty-six.  He’s a fellow merchant, ambitious like her with sights on the Japanese trade routes, and he smiles at her wild talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax even though he never knows what to say in reply.  His eyes don’t flicker through the spectrum when his moods change, but they are kind eyes and that is important to her.  He will be a good father to her children – and that, after all, is what she wants.

After her marriage, she goes a month without dreaming.  When she finally rounds the corner of the ruined mill, the tea party is empty.  The March Hare is nowhere in sight, although from the shards all around she can see he’s finally gone through all the teacups.  The Dormouse is asleep in a teapot.  Alice leaves her be and moves off to the brook, where she can see a colourful figure on its banks.

The Hatter is seated motionless in front of a row of saucers, all filled with weak and creamy tea.  “Don’t make a sound,” he whispers as Alice approaches.  “Or the Bread-and-Butterflies will take fright.”

There are a couple of Bread-and-Butterflies crouched at the end of the row, taking tiny pathetic sips from the last saucer.  Alice sits down beside the Hatter, tucking her feet soundlessly under her skirts.  They watch the Bread-and-Butterflies in silence until the insects have drunk their fill and crawl slowly out of sight.

“Miserable viewing,” says the Hatter eventually, “but it has to be done.  The creatures are facing extinction, y’see.  Of course one might argue we all are, but they’re certainly further up the curve than us and who are we to deny them sympathy?  I ask you.”

He extends his hand without looking at her.  Wordlessly, Alice places her left hand in it.  The Hatter takes it and turns it over in his hands like a piece of material, studying the ring on her fourth finger.

“Never been one for the making of rings,” he says tonelessly.  “A precise art.  Not my medium.  Ring’s an answer.  End of questions.  Not my medium.”

“You don’t have to like it,” tries Alice.  “But it was my choice to make.  This – ” she waves around them vaguely with her free hand, “this can’t be enough for me.  Not now.”

The Hatter is silent for a long time.  Alice thinks he’s waiting for the Bread-and-Butterflies to come back.  Suddenly the Hatter says, low and fast: “It’s not all it’s made out to be, you know.  Being mad.  Loopy.  Round the bend.  Knitting with only one needle, kettle boiling over, banana tree.  It is not, you know, a break, a holiday, taking the waters for your health.  You come and go but we don’t, we stay here and some of us are sick with it, see, I’m bleeding madness, bleeding mad, I can’t get out and I can’t go away but congratulationsIamveryhappyforyou.”  He drops her hand and clamps his mouth shut.

“I’m sorry,” says Alice after a while.

The Hatter keeps his hand on his mouth and shakes his head furiously.

Alice takes off her wedding ring.  It’s a simple gold band, a little thicker than she’d have liked but tasteful enough.  “Here,” she says, “I’ll trade you.”

She slides the ring onto his finger, then reaches up and unknots one of the ribbons on his hat.  She loops it around her wrist.  “There.  Done.”

The Hatter doesn’t say anything, but when she lays her head on his shoulder she can tell he’s stopped trembling.  They sit on the bank, watching the Bread-and-Butterflies come and go, until Alice falls asleep and wakes up with her head on her husband’s shoulder, in the house they bought in Surrey.

Later she tells him that she must have lost the ring on one of her sea voyages.  Things are lost so often on the voyages that he accepts this without question.  Their daughter, also Alice, is born a year later.  Alice gives her the ribbon to play with.

 

* * *

 

Her daughter begins when she is seven.   “Mother,” she whispers in Alice’s ear before bedtime, “I may be going mad.”

Alice combs her fingers through her daughter’s hand, long and gold like her own.  “Why do you say that, little one?”

Young Alice bites her lip.  “I saw a rabbit,” she mumbles, “a white one, in the garden after tea.  He had a huge pocket watch.  I think he wanted me to follow him, but Nurse kept such a firm hold of me all the time.  Do some rabbits have pocket watches, Mama, or am I going mad?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” Alice tells her gently.  “It’s not important whether you’re mad or not.  But I’ll tell you what’s important.”  She leans down so that their noses are almost touching, and says, very gravely: “Remember to take hold of the key before you drink from the bottle.  Have you got that?”

“Yes, Mama,” murmurs her daughter, eyes wide.

“Keep it in mind,” repeats Alice.  “It will save you a great deal of grief.”

 

* * *

 

Ten years later, Alice gets sick.  It’s a blur.  She hears people saying that it’s brain fever, that she hasn’t got long.  Her husband is there often, worried and clinging to her hand even though the doctors are always warning him out of the room.  Alice is not able to speak much, but she says their daughter’s name and points into the air, and he understands.

The dreams descend upon her, hot and heavy.  She’s crawling through the long grass and raising her heavy, heavy head over the rim of an enormous saucer to drink from the weak tea inside.  Way above her, the Hatter’s voice booms.  “They’re facing extinction, y’see.”

Alice wakes up.  Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee have carried her through the white marble corridors of the palace.  The White Queen leans over her, concern creasing her perfect brow.  “I made this specially,” she murmurs, dribbling a potion past Alice’s cracked lips.  “Drink up, dear one.  Every drop.”

“Will it make her better?” demands the Hatter.  He is sitting cross-legged by her head, Alice observes, wringing his hat in his hands.  The potion trickles down her throat like slivers of ice.

“No,” says the White Queen.  Her sadness is beautiful to behold.  “But it will make it easier.”

Alice wakes up.  She is back in her bedroom.  They have brought her daughter to see her.  Alice is unable to speak, but she does her best to smile.

“Mama,” says young Alice, voice wobbling.  “Remember how you always said to believe six impossible things before breakfast?”

Alice nods.  Her face hurts from the smile.

“I have been believing,” whispers her daughter, “that you will get better.  But it isn’t working.”

Alice finds her voice.  “Not in this world,” she forces herself to say.  “But somewhere else, it will happen.”

“Where?” Young Alice is crying now.  “Heaven, Mama?”

“Better,” says Alice, fading into the darkness.  “Somewhere you can visit.”

Alice wakes up.  They’ve buried her.

They’ve buried her alive.  She’s in an oblong box, one where she can barely move her limbs.  She can smell the earth pressing down on her.  It’s absolutely dark.  Alice opens her mouth and begins to scream.

Her throat is healed, at least.  Her voice is strong as ever.  Alice screams and screams and screams and almost misses it when the spade first strikes the lid of the coffin.  There is a crack in the darkness, and then daylight pouring in.  Alice can’t stop screaming.  It feels like the thing to do when one is getting born.

She sits up in the coffin, surrounded by mounds of earth.  In the distance, she can see those crazy twisted trees she would know anywhere.

They’re all there, with their spades and shovels.  The twins, the March Hare and Dormouse, the Cheshire Cat.  The White Queen is seated in the background, delicately organising the shovel crew.  The Hatter leans his weight on his shovel so he can reach down and haul her to her feet.

“Are you quite done dreaming, dear Alice?” purrs the Cheshire Cat.

Alice leans over to catch her breath.  “Yes,” she gasps.  “Oh, yes.”

The Hatter beams.  He picks her up easily, as if she were a little girl again, lifts her out of her grave and places her on solid ground with a flourish.  “Well,” he says, and he can’t stop grinning.  “About time you woke up, then.”

 

* * *

 

She had come into the woods because it looked so cool and shady beneath the trees, and the walk had been so pleasant that she had quite forgotten where she had meant to be going.  She had forgotten too a number of other things – for instance, she’d had a name once but she couldn’t call it to mind now, and she certainly wasn’t going to stand for that!

And so she went on through into the woods, positive that once she was clear of them she’d be able to remember the rest of it.  That was how she came upon the gentleman and the lady in a clearing.  They were seated on a fallen log and smiling at her, as if they’d been expecting her all this while.  The gentleman was nobody she’d seen before – and she was sure she’d remember him even if the woods were forgetting woods, for how could anyone forget a man who looked as mad as he?  The lady was dressed in blue, with her long, beautiful hair tied back with a faded ribbon, and she was suddenly, absolutely sure that they must have met, and lost each others’ names.

“Ma’am,” she said, dropping a curtsey – for she’d always been told to do so while thinking, though now she couldn’t remember by whom. “Might I please ask your name?”

The lady smiled, and again she was sure she knew that smile.  “Not in these woods, dear girl,” she said, “but walk a little further on and it will come to you.”

“Thank you,” she said, and dropped another curtsey.  And to be polite, she added: “Won’t you come, so you can remember too?”

“Oh no,” said the gentleman, and laughed.  It was a funny laugh, and she was hard put to keep from giggling herself – but giggling would not be proper.  “We’re quite happy here, thank you.  Delightful way to pass an afternoon, isn’t it?”

“But don’t let us keep you,” finished the lady.

“I’ll take my leave then,” she said, bobbed a third curtsey and went on through the woods.  She could feel their smiles upon her back as she left.

The woods thinned gradually till she came into an open field, and here Alice stopped quite suddenly and said: “Why, I’ve remembered after all! I’m Alice!” and then she remembered too why she had known the lady in blue so well.  “Mother!” she cried, and started back into the woods.  But she could not find her way back to where her mother had sat with the strange gentleman in the fantastic hat, and very soon she could not even remember what she was searching for.  So she left the woods again and continued on towards the eighth square, where she had been assured that she would be made Queen.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and summary quote are from the song Katie's Tea, by Camille.


End file.
